What Your Golf Game Says About You

Like many golfers, I am in love with the sport despite not being particularly great at it. Unlike many golfers, who compulsively lie about their scores, I am a man who appreciates the rules of golf, and who, for the most part (depending on how drunk I am), follows them.

Along with the written-out rules of golf scoring and golf etiquette, there are some unwritten mandates as well. These generally come in the form of specific ways you are supposed to play the game given certain situations. If you play your shot differently than the historically decided-upon “correct way,” you will be chastised and shamed by your fellow golfers. And, if you do decide to go against these unspoken decrees, it says a lot about your character as well.

Here are 4 golfing faux pas and what they say about the people who commit them.

1. Laying up

What it says about you: You’re a mental midget. You’re not one for taking risks, no matter how small, and it’s for the worst reason possible: because you don’t have faith in your own abilities. How does it feel to have everyone around you know you have low no self-esteem?

Other golf things you probably do: Putt from off the green, intentionally two-putt for par instead of risking over-shooting your birdie putt.

Non-golf things you probably do: Go 100% chalk in your March Madness bracket, keep all your money tied up in a fixed interest rate savings account instead of investing it, go to college in your hometown.

2. Playing from the tips when you have no business doing so

What it says about you: You think you’re better at things than you actually are. The exemplar of the bad side of irrational confidence, you suffer from delusions of grandeur that make you the worst kind of cocky person: the kind that can’t back it up, not even a little. You’re essentially just a glorified liar.

Other golf things you probably do: Check the hole when you don’t see your ball on the green despite watching it clearly roll off the back, mark down a bogey when you shot a triple, go for every dogleg par 4 in one and then spend 15 minutes looking for your ball in the woods.

Non-golf things you probably do: Apply to every Ivy league school despite having a 2.8 GPA and getting a 22 on the ACT, cause your trivia team to lose because you’re “100% certain” about answers that ended up being nowhere close to correct.

3. Immediately re-teeing after hitting a ball out of bounds

What it says about you: You’re a hack, and you know it — but that’s not stopping you from pissing off the rest of your group. Of course you’re entitled to a re-tee if you go OB with your drive, but at least let the rest of your group hit instead of forcing them to watch the second act of your play about terrible swings. Not only are you disgracing the game with your level of play, you’re disgracing it with your etiquette — and the latter is way, way worse.

Other golf things you probably do: Miss a short putt and then immediately reset and re-putt while other members of your group are waiting to putt, waste everyone’s time by hitting 10 balls into the water before finally dropping on the other side of the lake.

Non-golf things you probably do: Rear end a car and then threaten to sue the other driver, yell at a waiter for getting your order wrong when really it was your fault, die in Grand Theft Auto and then don’t hand the controller over to your friend because “falling deaths don’t count.”

4. Not fixing your divots/ball marks

What it says about you: You are an inconsiderate asshole through and through. Leave each hole the same as you found it so that other course patrons can enjoy their time as much as you enjoyed yours? Ha! “No thanks,” say all these sociopathic narcissists.

Other golf things you probably do: Not rake the bunkers, drive the cart right up to the green, hit into the group in front of you.

Non-golf things you probably do: Stick your gum on the underside of tables, take all the Halloween candy from houses that use the “please take one” honor system, eat your roommate’s food..